


maybe, maybe a near-death thing

by dramaticgasp



Series: you know i have ears on stalks [2]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Apocalypse, Apocalypse, Gen, Hurt Lance (Voltron), Hurt/Comfort, Langst, M/M, Quarantine, Virus, a good time to tag that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-30
Updated: 2019-12-25
Packaged: 2020-09-30 18:16:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20451452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dramaticgasp/pseuds/dramaticgasp
Summary: Lance lifts the walkie-talkie to his chin. Shiro's.Yeah – he recognises the weightlessness inside his body: it's a funeral feeling.





	1. Chapter 1

Lance drops the trash bag on the asphalt in front of the pharmaceutical manufacturing. The ache on his shoulder lingers like phantom pressure. The air inside his suit is stale and stifling from overuse – and he has never thought the thought before: _you can run out of anything._

  


Isn't it a black hole kind of funny? When you leap into action without knowing the logistics, not knowing its exposition? Like climbing over a chain-link fence when you only know how to climb and where dogs on the other side bite. 

  


He left the manufacturing in his old suit, the white one, the one that Shiro had pushed into his arms in the Facility all these weeks ago, saying, _Lance. Would you come with me? We need to talk about something._ White like sterility and body failure, like pathogenic death. 

  


Now he's wearing a lime green one. 

  


He lifts the walkie-talkie to his chin. Shiro's. He holds it softly in the cradle of his palm like something that shatters and tries to swallow around the absence of words. 

  


Yeah – he recognises the weightlessness inside his body: it's a funeral feeling. 

  


''Hi,'' he says – like something that shatters. ''I'm back.'' He winces at his word choice and then realises he forgot to press the push-to-talk button. He presses it now. ''I went on a supply run. You probably noticed. Hi,'' he repeats. Feels unease soaking the impenetrable material of his stolen level A suit and pooling in his plastic overshoes boots. 

  


''_Lance_, what the hell.'' 

  


And muted, he hears Pidge's voice, _oh, come on, you don't need to be clever to not have bet against me._

  


''Backdoor,'' Lance adds. 

  


The shadowless asphalt heat is like home sidewalks – but home is a thing left behind. It's like shadow-patterns flickering on his skin when he'd stand in the garden and it makes missing home like bindweed overgrowing his whole being. 

  


It was like this, ordered: a medical examination. Division into facilities. (_Cute name,_ Pidge said, _Epidemics management department facility 2. Cute. Catchy._) Shiro saying, _we need to talk about something_. Leaving, and thinking the words _leaving like a secret_. Keith's hideaway. Lance leaving and thinking _you can run out of anything._

  


Dissected and sewn back together, it's like this: a bit of a what-if scenario blown up from a microcosmos to a larger cosmos. And what is Lance left with? He has tripped over his anger and now it's all tangled around his ankles and he can't tell fear from anger, fear from resentment. 

  


His window reflection is replaced by his teammates. _Teammates_ is a word they started using on the second day. As if it were a game. 

  


''We need to find a way to get these inside,'' Lance says. He lifts the trashbag by its neck – and it's unspectacular. Four pairs of eyes fixate on it through the glass. In this moment of transmission static he feels how discomfort splashing around in his shoes while he was walking back – working up the courage, okay, okay – has worked up into discomfort, like too much air under the top layer of his skin. 

  


Lance thinks of holding a cut-off head in the bag and lowers his arm. 

  


''Come on, aren't you gonna say anything? Or do I have to?'' Lance asks, then thinks, _the irony._ He reads the mouth curves of others and knows where their quiet spurts from: Shiro is the most responsible, Shiro is the _control officer_ as a member of a _cooperating responder_, and he knows the joint plan of action and he got them out of the Facility, and he's older, and he's _Shiro._ When one says, _I don't know, ask Shiro?_ it sounds like a sensible thing to do. 

  


''Aren't you gonna say anything, Shiro?'' 

  


He meets Shiro's eyes. He has been avoiding them, he realises, and now he comprehends why: it's the inexplicability of them. He focuses on Shiro's shoulders instead. He's something styled like neo-Renaissance. The way his arms are uncrossed. 

  


The white miniaturised statue has never been fitting for their family's hallway cupboard. And Shiro just stands there _like this._

  


Shiro says, ''We could quarantine you.'' 

  


''Where,'' Lance says, slow and heavy like post-storm air, ''in the bathroom?'' 

  


''Did you get that from the Facility?'' Pidge asks. ''You did. You took Shiro's card.'' For a second Lance fears he doesn't have it in his pocket. But of course he does. ''They'll know it was you, they have cameras. They probably know already.'' 

  


''I checked seven stores before,'' Lance snaps, ''I'm glad you considered that. What would've you done? And I brought the ID back.'' 

  


With Shiro's ID, Lance is just like him: an intruder, a now false ingroup member, a garden snake. He pulls the card from a pocket, then drops it back inside. 

  


''We've been trying to get ahold of you,'' Shiro says. He shifts his weight exactly the same way Keith does. Everything that was taken for granted, thought to be evergreen, was now an alternative ending: the only long-time thing in the Manufacturing seems to be what Shiro and Keith have had. 

  


Pidge says, ''I'm just saying. As a fact.'' 

  


''Yeah. Listen to your tone,'' Lance replies. 

  


He's draining, and acid is scraping at his stomach. There is no plug anywhere anymore. 

  


''Why don't you fight later during afternoon tea or something,'' Hunk says. His hands are splayed on the window sill. 

  


''My tone is conveying that this is just a fact,'' Pidge says. 

  


''Pidge,'' Shiro says. 

  


''Oh, come on.'' She pushes herself from the window; comes right back. 

  


''Anyway,'' Lance says and hears what his voice sounds like: caustic. ''Anyway. I don't know how to transfer these inside. Without contaminating everything. '' 

  


Everyone is quiet for another moment. For a moment, it's just sun and heat. 

  


Hunk makes a noise. ''This is so stupid.'' 

  


Lance looks at the bag. He tried using a trolley but was unsettled by the noise in the invasive quietness. 

  


He says, ''You'll think of something. Pidge will think of something.'' 

  


Stupid, foolish Lance, huh? But he's only foolish backward. When your foolishness is a charge-before-fire act, you're only stupid backwards. 

  


''We need to get you inside,'' the look on Hunk's face means: _obviously. Obviously, Lance._

  


One obvious alternative, anyway. Lance sees his thought register on Hunk's face. He sees _oh_ and thinks, _not so stupid, uh?_ Thinks, _I know, right._

  


Shiro is biting his lip. ''Alright. Lance,'' he turns to him, the curve of his shoulders something Lance can't translate. ''I'm trying to think beyond just myself. Hypothetically—'' 

  


''Like in Hunk's ghost story,'' Pidge mutters. 

  


''What?'' Hunk asks. 

  


''Nobody thinks of anything before an outer force gets them. Minus the loose hands.'' 

  


Hunk huffs, ''Come on, when have you not figured something out before?'' and a breath bubbles up Lance's throat because _nobody had thought of anything before,_ not of anything _good,_ and then he bit into the rotting part of the— 

  


''_Hypothetically_,'' Shiro says, ''we could take the risk and—'' 

  


''But, like, if we all catch it, Lance won't benefit from it either. I'm not saying that–'' Hunk spins towards Lance, places a hand on the glass. ''Lance, buddy, don't worry. I'm just saying we have to be tactful.'' 

  


''Shiro,'' Lance says, weighs his words, ''I have thought about this. It—'' 

  


''I wasn't gonna say we'd make you leave,'' Shiro says. ''Okay? We wouldn't do that.'' 

  


''What about the inspection,'' Pidge blurts. 

  


''_Pidge_,'' Lance accuses. 

  


''Living independently is permitted,'' Shiro says, almost absently. 

  


''Stealing is not.'' 

  


Lance exhales through the nose, ''Okay. seriously? I could just say that I stole this for myself and that you weren't involved.'' 

  


''Shiro, he can't do that,'' Hunk says, heated, and Lance says, ''_Hunk._'' 

  


Thinks: _give me my agency back._

  


Shiro continues, ''Stealing isn't the problem right now, especially since the judicial system has obviously not been functional.'' 

  


''Why are we focusing on this,'' Lance interrupts,'' why are we even talking about this.'' 

  


''Yes,'' Hunk says, ''we should be focusing on Lance. But Lance has been making stupid decisions, so we can't let Lance focus on Lance.'' 

  


Hunk has crossed his arms and is facing Shiro. His diverted gaze is barricading Lance out, and Lance is unarmed, which leaves him – not delicate, _not delicate._ Which leaves him unarmed. 

  


''Keith,'' Lance tries. 

  


Keith's face is twisted in his damn absolute focus as he shakes his head minimally. ''They shouldn't be doing home inspection anymore.'' 

  


''Okay,'' Lance decides, ''I guess that if you won't _listen to me_—'' he looks at them pointedly, ''I guess I'll just go. Here are your groceries.'' He nudges the bag with a foot and turns, but a can rolls out and he turns and puts it back in, then starts walking away. 

  


His blood is flowing like an overdrive, like he'll drive _over_ and into a fall, because his fear's neck is this thick – and then he remembers the ID and stops again. He considers placing it on the windowsill, but his vision is all blurry, so he's just putting it on the ground—and then a hand clenches the material of his suit and pulls him back and through the door. 

  


It would be comical, how everyone gasps and backs away, except it's not. Keith lets go and slams the door behind them, then turns to Lance. 

  


_Keith Keith Keith Keith._

  


And then time stops. Lance just stands there. Everyone just stands there. 

  


''_Take it off_,'' Pidge says from under the hands covering her face. 

  


Lance jumps into motion and starts unzipping and crawling out of his suit, feeling others' eyes and feeling like a circus act, gritting teeth as he's trying to pull the plastic boots off. He pulls the second boot off and Pidge immediately opens the door, hurls the suit out, slams the door closed, and then strides away. Lance is really glad nobody is saying _this wasn't your call_, because he did really not— 

  


''Alright,'' Keith says. 

  


The zero-G inside Lance's chest – is the promise of asphyxiation. Maybe, maybe, a near-death thing. 

  


He wipes the sweat from his hairline, then drops the arm again. 

  


Keith turns to Shiro and says, ''It is what it is.'' Their eyes lock. Shiro swallows, nods, swallows again. Lance observes like a not-there being. Keith's level face, doubt-free, in all his marble inelegance, is the dot after a statement.

  


Keith intently strides out of the room. 

  


Lance avoids Shiro's eyes. Everybody's. The way he's centered – the way he's watched, makes him think of cleaning blood rust from a sword. He left the manufacturing, thinking, _I had never felt this sharp before,_ and now he feels something like relief and others watch him like he's something they can cut themselves on. 

  


It's a wax situation: the way everyone in the room has stilled now that the dust is sinking. 

  


Lance looks at Shiro's eyes, and thinks at Keith: _I made a mental list of things that earn me points against you, and this was supposed to be one of them._

  


Keith, a threat to community engagement. Keith with a swiss knife inside his thigh pocket. Keith grazing an officer's glove when he handed it over onto an open palm. 

  


''Tea, anyone?'' Hunk says, hollowly. 

  


''Lance,'' Shiro breathes. 

  


''I just borrowed it. Sorry.'' 

  


''I need to say this: I'd never—'' 

  


''Here, '' Keith re-enters with a bottle of antiseptic and wipes. 

  


Isn't it a black hole kind of funny? When you use antiseptics against something that kills almost all life. Keith opens the bottle, then narrows his eyes and leans forward to scrutinise Lance's face. 

  


''What?'' Lance spits, but it's all hollow. Looks past Keith, past Shiro, past Hunk. 

  


''I'm just disinfecting, do you have a problem?'' 

  


''No,'' Lance says. He thought he was aiming for vehement, but isn't surprised when it comes out flat. 

  


Keith says, ''You're welcome, then.'' His voice is ignition in itself. 

  


''_You're_ welcome,'' Lance shoots. 

  


Keith slowly locks eyes with Shiro – like Lance isn't there. Then Keith locks eyes with him. 

  


It has happened before: Lance stumbled over Keith's glare and broke his taste; how infuriating was Keith when they reached the Manufacturing in their white suits and he turned to Shiro, _they will stay with us?_ his gaze catching on Lance, properly for the first time, _all of them?_

  


Lance stumbles over a boy with no affiliation, a loose end — a cut string, had he ever been bound — and what he's learning from the fall is the opposite of congeniality. 

  


Lance once bit his tongue around _you're obsessed with survival,_ and instead he said, _we've got nothing in common. Except for that we both lived in an affected site._

  


__

__

_What isn't an affected site,_ Keith replied. 

  


_Yes, thank you for proving my point._

  


But then: Keith locks eyes with him, and Lance changes his mind. Keith has only known him for four weeks, but he pulled him inside and is now looking at him like _that_ and Lance thinks: _never mind. You know what? Never mind, I'm – brave as fuck, self-diagnosed._

  


Complex problems often have simple solutions, and while this might not be a solution at all, he's hit with a feeling he hasn't felt in a while: there's creation at the other side of destruction. 

  


''Who's got whom now?'' Lance snatches the box of wipes from Keith's hands, pulls one out, then throws the box back at Keith. 

  


''Hey,'' Keith says. 

  


''You're with us. Okay?'' Shiro mutters. It reads like a continuation; like sidestepping in negative. 

  


Lance doesn't lift his eyes from his hands and rubs a side of a finger until it's reddened like a burn.

  
  



	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is from Keith's pov

''Can't you take a _no_.''

  


Keith thinks they shouldn't be shouting, but apparently the bathroom door is a substantial insulator, after all. Nobody thinks it's funny. Keith doesn't. He fucking hopes Lance doesn't either, but Lance is pliable, always good at improvising, and he play-dohs all his senses. Who knows what he would laugh at now.

  


''No,'' Keith says, half-shouts back, and hopes it will translate as not shouting. _Can't you?_

  


The hallway doesn't smell like cleaning agents anymore. He waits for a few seconds, then knocks again. It's been twenty minutes. His patience isn't even thin, or he doesn't know. His patience is straying somewhere outside of him. Impalpable.

  


''Silent treatment?'' Keith asks, sounding neutral. Sounding like _oh just asking_. He feels pretty neutral, huh.

  


It's silent, and remaining silent, and Keith is nodding in his head, but then Lance says, ''_No._''

  


Okay. Maybe that can be read as permission to continue, or as a something. Keith will continue anyway, because he was on a rollercoaster when he realised he wasn't afraid of rollercoasters; his second foster parents, in Amarillo, did patch-up work with glue-like cotton candy; and guess what, Keith realised he was unafraid of rollercoasters, so it worked with at least one shard.

  


''Everybody's assuming the same thing,'' Keith tells him. It's true.

  


''Then _why would you try to come in._''

  


''Lance,'' Keih says, with unknowable patience, ''come on.''

  


''Can you stop _forcing_ me.''

  


''If you opened the door, it wouldn't be forcing you.''

  


In the Facility, two weeks in, a hallway in the east wing was locked. Unvacated. Keith overheard somebody saying that nobody was catering it, because of an outbreak. Hunk called that a rumour. Shiro called it gossip.

  


There is a clicking sound. Fumbling with the lock, for long enough that Keith thinks _clumsy, is the calibration of his body off?_ And: _it's just nerves_. He's inside, and Lance closes the door. 

  


''There. Die now.'' 

  


Keith instinctively dusts off the side of his jacket that Lance grabbed, then dusts off the other side as a cover-up. Lance crosses his arms. 

  


Lance's jacket is a nest on the floor and a stack of toilet paper rolls that Pidge called _the Statue of Liberty_ has been reshaped into a pyramid. Keith wonders if it means something. Things often carried something behind their opaqueness.

  


''So.'' Keith feels like he should do something with his arms. Sometimes when he says that it's a self-deprecating thing. Now he's actually trying, okay.

  


Lance raises his eyebrows. Keith needs to start over.

  


''So what is it,'' he asks.

  


Lance extends his arm, locking eyes with Keith, hand fisted. A deadly solemn offering, and nobody backing out. He pulls his sleeve upwards to reveal a barely noticeable rash.

  


Keith steps closer. It looks the same from here. ''That's it?''

  


''Th—'' Lance's eyes flick to his skin, and he rushedly rolls the sleeve back down, over his fingers, disappearance by digestion. ''That's enough.''

  


The haste, the dart-mindedness; it's retreating from a cold burn of urgency. In healthy fear, but also the fear of unfamiliarity. So unlike Keith, who has held urgency's hand for eighteen years. To whom urgency's hand isn't cold anymore. And somebody once called him _unadjusted. _

  


He scratches his own arm and watches colour float to the surface of his skin. It's just like Lance's but without the watercolour edges. Like motorcycle trails. Leaning on something could press into skin like that, maybe.

  


''And a headache,'' Lance adds, his body all strange micro angles, voice filling all the spaces in the word _monotony_. The way he has looked away, not at anything.

  


''You don't know.'' Keith hopes he sounds supportive. Not optimistic. Realistic.

  


Lance sits on the toilet lid. Leans back, crosses his arms. Looks at nothing as he says, ''You know, it's genuinely unnecessary for you to keep saying that.''

  


''What? I had never said that.''

  


Lance's eyes are half-lidded. He blinks meaningfully at Keith, but Keith doesn't know the cypher type. ''Yeah. Okay.''

  


''I hadn't,'' Keith insists. Lance looks away. Keith wishes he'd stop doing that.

  


''Now you can't go out, either, genius,'' Lance says. No razor to it. ''Not without exposing others. But what's new.''

  


Keith sits down, then shakes off his jacket and sits on it. This is what he is: containing bodily self-awareness. He feels like himself. ''I never said that. And I did that once.'' _For you. For you, too. _''Shiro is my brother.''

  


Lance raises his eyebrows. Keith really wishes he'd stop doing that. ''And yet?''

  


''Can't you, like, — separate art from the artist? Like, what they do?''

  


Silence. Stillness. Bodily self-awareness and things fractured. Keith remembers he once looked into why blue isn't just calming. It was a search that poured years of his life into a keyboard. The answer: because it's coldness and distance, even when you're _right there._

  


''Wow, big words,'' Lance says. ''Pretty sure that's not how the phrase is used.'' Then he corrects himself, ''Big ideas. Also no, you keep doing that.'' 

  


Keith thinks it's strange that somebody who exaggerates this much aims for precision. He replaces thinking about that with splaying a hand on the tiles and lifting his fingers one by one. Manipulating heat exchange.

  


Lance sways his head side to side, Keith hears a crack. Downwards and then looks at the ceiling. ''I want— I don't want to—''

  


Keith looks at the ceiling, too. Wanting is timeless when the bathroom moon is always full.

  


Others want the news-current to reverse and the radio to stop discussing international relations and to go to a bar and talk about how jazz evokes a sense of alienation in them. Hunk once said: _we're using the radio, dude. That's a critical point._

  


Keith is still wishing blank wishes. He just wants. With the direction of a cheque, because he doesn't know about gift cards. 

  


But he feels less two-thirds-water-one-third-emptiness in his little mirror nest, mirroring the one Lance made. He's on the floor and feels on the ground.

  


Lance doesn't finish. Fractured attention. His eyes are skimming and glazed, rapid dream-awake-eyes. Devitalising dreams, it seems. Lance doesn't want to be here, like this.

  


This is prodding Keith's irritability. Lance is here, like this, but so is Keith. He's sitting on the floor and feels grounded, and apparently some things come with — whatever, terms and conditions, whatever, and he clicks accept, double clicks, quadruple clicks, because he _means it._

  


Yeah. Yeah, he clicks accept. Unknowable terms. Accept. 

  


  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> be rootin, be tooting, and by god be shootin; but most of all, be kind
> 
> i sent this to the cowboy in my life and he hearted it
> 
> you know how it is. im pressing my cheek into the walls of the internet, whispering: COMMENTE

**Author's Note:**

> as always, leave a comment and plant a new level of ALIVE in me
> 
> also hehe consider commissioning me :-) 100 words for 0.5£. i love inducing feelings and something tells me i'd love some income, it won't break my poor student aesthetic anyway


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